Bloggers / Matthew Pitt / 06 October 2009 / Leave a comment

It took just under 11 hours of play to whittle down 111 players to the final 24 in the £5,000 EPT London main Event. Each of the remaining players is guaranteed to go home with at least £17,000 but they will all have one eye on the £850,000 awarded for winning the tournament.

Betfair's Annette Obrestad started the day with 312,000 and she quickly added 35,000 to this on the first hand! Less than an hour later, when on the money bubble, her stacked peaked at 430,000.

With the screens displaying 105 remaining players, it meant the next person to bust out would go home empty handed. That dubious honour went to Piero Mormina after he open-shoved his last 28,500 chips with 3h3s only to be called by German Benny Spindler with Js8c. The board ran out 7sTcThAd9c and Spindler's straight was more than enough to burst the bubble. Spindler finished 3rd in the EPT Main Event in Paradise Island in January and will be looking for at least more of the same when play restarts this afternoon.

Ms Obrestad then won a mammoth pot to become the tournament's chip leader. Harri Suni raised on the button and Annette re-raised in the big blind. Suni then shoved all in, prompting a call from the talented Norwegian. Both players revealed their cards, Suni had Ad8d whilst Annette was ahead with AcKd. The flop of 7cQdTd brought Suni a flush draw but it failed to appear as Qh and Kc fell on the turn and river and Annette boosted her stack to around 750,000.

Shortly after the break, 'Annette_15' extended her chip lead when she once again got her money in whilst dominating her opponent's hand. This time Annette raised to 16,000 in the cutoff, Raymond Wu flat-called on the button but Umberto Vitagliano moved all-in from the blinds. Annette then re-raised to isolate Vitagliano and Wu obliged by folding his hand. Annette held AsQc and was up against AhTs and it stayed ahead on a board reading JhJs2s6h4d to take her to 900,000.

Not everything was plain sailing for the 2007 WSOPE Main Event Champion as she managed to get all-in with Aces on a flop showing Qx8x5x to find she was against Ace-king but the turn and river were both Kings to knock her back down to 750,000.

Her relentless aggression looked like it was paying off as she passed the magic 1,000,000 chip mark later in the day but after losing 77 to A6 and either initially being played back at and then getting no action towards the end of play, Annette Obrestad finished the day with 730,000 chips, to put her 16 from 24 in terms of chips.

There are still some notable faces left in the field including 2008 WSOP Main Event Champion, Peter Eastgate, popular Irish player Marty Smyth and WPT winner Vivek Rajkumar. The title of chip leader goes to Michael Berry (pictured), an amateur player who won his seat in a freeroll held in conjunction with the Daily Mirror newspaper! What a story it would be if he could take the tournament down, well finish second behind Annette of course!